


I felt it shelter to speak to you

by orphan_account



Series: not knowing when the dawn will come [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, brief mentions of Kay and Chirrut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 15:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12634161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "[...] it’s easy to talk like this: with only the quiet hum of the ship as white noise and a handful of security lights on, it’s as close to comfortable as one can get in these days. Like a small respite from the war, existing in a non-space in between days"Cassian and Bodhi getting to know each other due to a shared tendency towards insomnia.





	I felt it shelter to speak to you

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is my very first fanfic ever, hopefully it's not too terrible hahaha  
> first off, i'd like to mention that this fic contains:  
> \- some drinking  
> \- mild descriptions of violence (at the very beginning)  
> if any of these things make you uncomfortable, please proceed with caution  
> now, to something a bit lighter lol since i've never written much of anything, i had planned for this to be a character study of sorts. it ended up having a bit more plot than i anticipated, so i rearranged a few bits and made a short story out of it! i hope you guys enjoy it <3  
> title from one of emily dickinson's letters, because i read far too much emily dickinson tbh

When Cassian first joined the ranks of the Rebellion, back when he was young enough to always be full of certainties, he thought it was just a matter of time for him to get used to (the weight of the blaster in his hands, the smell of singed flesh, the sound of the bodies hitting the floor) everything. Surely, it gets easier with time, he’d think to himself, lying awake on his bunker and staring at the ceiling. Once I’m more experienced, everything will fall into place.

Years later, his hands no longer shake on the trigger, and Cassian wears his insomnia like a second skin.

Chirrut will sometimes try to teach him meditation techniques, whenever he finds him roaming the ship hallways in the dead of night; Cassian usually humors him, which he is fairly certain the monk can somehow sense, but he’s also fairly certain he’s not spiritually inclined enough for this to have any chance of working. The company is nice, though, and hearing Chirrut’s religious ponderings – with the occasional grumbling intermission by Baze – is novel enough to be interesting in its own right.

The one Cassian finds himself talking to the most, however, is the pilot.

They don’t exactly click right away, which Cassian surmises is to be expected. He doesn’t know how to approach Bodhi – doesn’t know anything about the man, really, other than the readily available information: Imperial defector, handy at flying, and, apparently, incapable of sleeping more than a couple of hours per day. The first three or so times Cassian tries to make conversation, they only seem to manage a handful of short dialogues in between long stretches of semi-awkward silence; so, on the fourth try, he brings along a bottle of jet juice.

“It’s not that I, you know, can’t,” Bodhi says after his third glass, talking with the slow precision of a man used to being wasted. “Sleep, I mean. ‘S not that I can’t. Just don’t like it.”

“Mm.” He has long eyelashes, some part of Cassian’s brain notices. “I get it. I mean, I’m more… I can’t, really, haven’t been good at this sleep thing in ages, but I think… I think even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.”

It’s hard to be eloquent after four glasses of jet juice (it’s hard to eloquent after so much as smelling the fumes of jet juice, there’s a good reason the stuff is banned in most civilized places), but Bodhi nods along like he’s being deeply insightful, so he continues:

“It’s not even about the dreams or anything. Well, not just about the dreams, anyway. It’s just, I don’t know, there’s just so much… effort. Not like you can just, just lie down and, you know, sleep. There’s a whole…” he gesticulates with his glass, noticing there’s still some juice left in it. He finishes it off before continuing: “… a whole thing.”

“It’s true.” The pilot turns the empty glass over in his hands, seemingly deep in thought. His eyelashes really are long. In this lighting, Cassian can almost see the shadows they cast on his face. “I don’t… I’m not really good at knowing what to do, though. When I can’t sleep,” he clarifies, looking over at the other man for a fraction of a second. “But this is… nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I think so too,” Cassian replies after a second. “I think we should do this again sometime.”

If it sounds like a cheap pickup line, Bodhi doesn’t mention either way; he just smiles, responds with a quiet ‘maybe we should’, and pours himself another glass.

It does become something of a regular occurrence after that. Even without the liquor (because, contrary to what Kay might imply, Cassian isn’t actually made of the stuff,) it’s easy to talk like this: with only the quiet hum of the ship as white noise and a handful of security lights on, it’s as close to comfortable as one can get in these days. Like a small respite from the war, existing in a non-space in between days.

Bodhi is quieter some nights, getting a sort of hollow look that reminds Cassian of the first time they met and everything the other man had gone through (‘like sand,’ he tried to explain once, ‘like wet sand inside my skull, rattling everything out of place’). On other nights – nights like this – he’ll laugh, talk about friends and colleagues, episodes of the entirely different life he lead until a few days ago. It’s odd, Cassian thinks detachedly, smiling along with the other man’s enthusiasm even as his mind wanders, it’s very odd to think that they’re both here now, keeping each other company in the dead of night; under any other circumstances, if they ever crossed paths, it’d likely have been on the battlefield.

There is a lull in the conversation as Bodhi finishes his latest tale, and the captain takes a moment to just observe him, his sharp lines and soft eyes. In a kinder, more forgiving world, they might have had more nights like this, more time to exist without more pressing matters.

“Maybe I should just wait on the ship when we get there.”

The pilot’s voice is almost too quiet to catch, even sitting shoulder to shoulder on the ship floor as they are. Cassian isn’t entirely sure he is talking to him, or if he even realizes he is talking aloud, but replies in the same quiet voice either way:

“We’ll probably change ships, though. Get assigned something more combat appropriate.”

The other man looks over at him with tired eyes and a slight frown before nodding to himself, gaze dropping to his feet. A strand of his hair falls out of place and Cassian almost reaches out to brush it back from his forehead before he remembers himself.

“Why?”

“Mm?”

“Why would you want to, I mean. Stay on the ship, that is.”

“Oh,” he laughs a tired chuckle that only manages to lift the left side of his mouth. Cassian finds himself unconsciously mimicking the expression. “Well, it’s kind of stupid, really, especially with all of…” he says, motioning vaguely at everything, “… I just, I don’t know how welcome I’d be there, I guess.”

He pulls at the sleeves of his imperial uniform and Cassian thinks of Kay, of the wide berth some people gave them in the hallways even weeks after he’d been reprogrammed. He thinks of Kay some more, then, of the current Kay, who carved a space for himself on the base so expertly it is hard to imagine one without the other.

“It might take a while,” he says instead, aiming for comforting but likely missing, “since trust is something that takes time, you know? Just, in general. Give it time, though,” he continues, shrugging slightly, looking down at his own hands, “and they’ll… well, they’ll love you.”

“Are you… do you really think so?”

The pilot’s tone makes him look up. There is no distrust in his voice or in his expression, just a sort of open curiosity that almost startles a laugh out of Cassian. What an odd man, he thinks to himself almost fondly.

“How could they not?”

The too-candid words slip out from his mouth without his consent, but the way they seem to make the other man flustered for a second or two makes it okay. Bodhi starts to say something, stops, thinks about it some more, starts again:

“Can I kiss you?”

Cassian, a man of action through and through, answers simply by pulling him closer; and as Bodhi closes the space in between them, here, in this intermission of reality, he thinks this might be one of the kinder worlds after all.

**Author's Note:**

> this could have easily been an au of them as college students and i'd hardly have to change a thing lol  
> anyway, this has been fun to write! i think i'd like to write more in the future <3  
> come talk to me about star wars on taradiddling.tumblr.com


End file.
